The 5G New Radio Code: Elementary Absorbing Sets and Error Floor Performance

The data channels in the 5G New Radio use quasi-cyclic low-density parity check (LDPC) codes for error control. Such codes, when used with a practical quantizer and an iterative decoder, typically have an error floor that is strongly impacted by absorbing sets present in the code's structure. This paper leverages the particular structure found in the 5G code to describe a simple means of identifying its (elementary) absorbing sets and describes an algorithm for finding them. It then uses simulation results to show which of the absorbing sets are responsible for the error floor performance for a particular choice of code and quantizer parameters.